Though already out for a year, and despite Microsoft's control of the
underlying architecture, MOM faces a fight for the hearts and minds of
network managers.

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Microsoft Operations Manager (MOM) first hit the market about a year ago.
Administrators, though, are still addled with questions. How does
Microsoft's new MOM network management system (NMS) interplay with NetIQ,
UNIX management, and Microsoft's own Systems Management Server (SMS), for
instance?

The Windows management market will double in size from $2.7 billion in 2000
to $6.6 billion through 2005, Gartner predicts. Microsoft carries
strong advantages over competitors in this market because it controls the
underlying technology architecture - OS, directory services, and
applications. Gartner, though, points to disadvantages for Microsoft, as
well. "The Microsoft management 'stack' is not complete."

Moreover, integration between MOM, SMS, and Application Center still leaves
a lot to be desired, added one of the authors of the report, Cameron
Haight, during an interview this week. The Gartner analyst predicted that
it will take Microsoft anywhere from 18 to 24 months to overcome these
drawbacks.

"As I've heard it, initial sales of MOM have been acceptable, but not
overwhelming. A lot of the sales have been for small deployments. There's
been some apprehension among users. People are still evaluating the
product," concurred Michael Betts, technical consultant for PIGMailion
Computer Group in London, UK.

One set of reasons for the slow start? User confusion over the differences
between MOM and SMS on the one hand, and between MOM and NetIQ's product
line-up, on the other. Microsoft licensed the source code for NetIQ's
Operations Manager (OM) in October, 2000.

"There haven't been big technical hurdles, because NetIQ has gone in for
ease of use. I'll agree, though, that Microsoft's (explanation of MOM vs.
NetIQ) could use more definition," said Gartner's Haight.

Meanwhile, after hearing about MOM, some net managers conjectured that
Microsoft wanted to replace SMS. Microsoft officials are doing what they
can to shoot down this theory.

"A lot of people are concerned about MOM - what we call Microsoft
Operations Manager -- as being a replacement product for SMS," acknowledged
Wally Mead, of Microsoft Support. Actually, "that is not the intent at
all," he added, during a recent Webcast.. Conversely, MOM is instead "a
very complementary product to SMS."

Microsoft is positioning MOM as an "operations management" system. SMS and
App Center, on the other hand, are mainly "change and configuration
management" products, according to Mead.

MOM works mainly with Windows 2000 servers, though, at this point,
according to Betts. "MOM does provide some limited management of NT servers
straight out of the box. But where it keeps three logs for Windows 2000
servers - a systems event log, a security event log, and an applications
log - it only keeps a systems event log for NT servers," he said.

"If you want to get security event and applications logs for NT, you'll
have to buy NetIQ's Extended Management Pack (XMP) for Windows NT, a
product that 'unlocks' the (NT) agents."

Meanwhile, Microsoft and NetIQ are each selling XMPs for Microsoft's .NET
servers. Moreover, NetIQ, Compaq and Global Maintech have come out with
XMPs and other tools geared to greater crossplatform managemement
functionality

MOM and SMS, however, both already contain Windows Management Interface
(WMI) interfaces, for exchanging information with SNMS-compliant NMS
running on UNIX and other OS.

"The advantage of SNMP is that it's universal. The big disadvantage is that
it doesn't give you much information," according to Haight.

Microsoft plays "MOM"
In the high-stakes NMS game, why does Microsoft want to play the MOM?
"Historically, Microsoft only dabbled in product development and opted to
let third-party independent software vendors (ISVs) provide primary support
for Windows platforms," notes Gartner's report.

Microsoft is investing in Windows management products and services for
"defensive, offensive, and opportunistic" reasons, according to Gartner.
Defensively, Microsoft wants to "preserve its Windows platform against
competition from other OS platforms."

Offensively, the goal is "to use Windows management as a key enabler to
improve the scaling up (within the data center) and scaling out (to the
Internet) capabilities of Windows." From an opportunistic perspective,
Microsoft is seizing the opportunity "to exceed $1 billion in he Windows
management market before mid-2005."

"At the end of the day, though, Microsoft is primarily in this game to
secure the Windows market - and to beat the likes of Linux. If Microsoft
can make a ton of money in the process, then, so much the better," Haight
elaborated during this week's interview.

Managing Linux from Windows?
"Back in the 1400s and 1500s, Spain and Portugal divided the world," Haight
quipped. In a similar sense, Microsoft and NetIQ are now divvying up
Windows management, he contended.

"NetIQ has two primarily roles: to be the 'advanced technology' group for
Microsoft, (through) some of the XMPs for advanced applications, and to act
as an integrator of third-party environments, though XMPs for UNIX, for
instance," Haight added.

For its part, Global MainTech recently announced a "WMI Event Provider"
aimed at using MOM to view devices in MVS, Linux, UNIX, and AS400
environments.

Some doubt, though, whether SNMP-based management from MOM will pick up
much steam. "Windows hasn't quite proved itself yet in large heterogeneous
environments. Mainframe people, in particular, find themselves suspicious
of new environments. I'm not sure that mainframe people will want to do
network management in Windows," Haight observed.

Long live SMS
MOM isn't the only Microsoft product with operational management features.
SMS contains some, too. SMS, though, is aimed much more closely at
configuration or change management, according to Microsoft's Mead.

"SMS has some summarizers in the status system that can tell you the
operational state of an SMS server; tell you whether some of the services
on the SMS servers are up or down; tell you what the disks\ space is;
whether you're in good condition or bad condition in disk space; your
Microsoft SQL Server space and so on," said Mead.

Actually, Microsoft's first product in the operations management space was
Health Monitor. "HealthMon 2.0 shipped with SMS 2.0. It was on the compact
disk, and you could install it as an add-on product if you wanted to - and
it gave you very, very basic capabilities for operations management,"
according to Mead.

Microsoft subsequently released HealthMon 2.1 with the Windows Datacenter
Server. "It had the ability of reading some additional data. It had some
additional data sources, and a little bit more ability to be customized,
than the SMS version of Health Monitor. MOM, however, goes well beyond
HealthMon," Mead maintained.

MOM vs. AM
MOM is still in its infancy. As the product matures, though, it will be
competing with Big 4 products, as well as with NetIQ's AM and other NMS
from smaller players.

Administrators are divided over the merits of MOM vs. AM. "If you are
running a mission critical e-commerce type shop and need robust monitoring,
I would still stay with AppManager. If I am looking long term, and rolling
out an enterprise management strategy over the year time window, I will
still stay with MOM," wrote one administrator, in an Internet newsgroup.

"Well that of course assumes you want a reactive monitoring solution rather
than a proactive management solution. MOM is an event consolidator - a good
one at that - but in essence it is mainly interpreting data written to the
event logs (i.e. historic information)," responded another user.

"App Manager can read log events, but it also takes data from a number of
other sources, including the ability to read system state variables via
API. In other words, MOM will alert on what the program is aware of,
whereas AppManager can look deep inside the application to assess its true
health. Those who go with MOM will most likely choose to complement it to
get that deep knowledge of AD, Exchange, SQL, etc. But I can also see a
reason why AM users would add MOM."

MOM vs. Multiplatform NMS
In Betts' opinion, MOM's main strength in the larger NMS arena can be found
in the fact that it comes with 8,000 built-in rules. MOM's rules can be
applied to event collection, alerts, performance, and report generation,
for instance. The XMP from Microsoft and other vendors provide additional
rules for .NET and non-Microsoft servers.

"You can get MOM out there right away. Some other products (from larger NMS
vendors) are going to take you longer to deploy," Betts predicted.

"Right now, Microsoft wants to become absolutely brilliant at managing
Windows. Others, on the other hand, are trying to do a good job of managing
Windows along with other environments."

In MOM SPK2, due for imminent release, Microsoft is expected to clean up
MOM's initial code. Also anticipated for SPK2 is SDK2, for applications
requiring custom rules.

For MOM 2.0, Betts predicts tighter integration with both SMS and
Application Center. "I think a lot of people will hold out for 2.0, before
launching large deployments," he predicted.

Free Web-based assistance is available, too. Microsoft is providing a free
downloadable deployment guide to MOM 2000 from its MOM Web site. Meanwhile,
message boards are being run by both Microsoft and other parties.

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